Holiday jeer

Holiday season is supposed to be rough on single people sometimes. I have not really felt this pain though I can see how some single people, especially chicks can feel lonely and depressed this time of the year. To me, Christmas pretty much means the NBA kick-off on ABC. Considering that the Lakers play every year, my mood is directly linked to them in some ways. I am happier if they lose and am a little sadder if they win! So you can imagine how I feel this Christmas day given that not only did the Lakers win, they actually beat my beloved Suns today fairly convincingly.

VERY, VERY disturbing loss for the Suns. They have now lost 10 games this season. I wrote a while back that their loss against the Warriors was disturbing because the Warriors might be the one team that might play the Suns style better and match-up very well with the Suns. This Lakers loss is even worse. First of all, this is not a fluke because the Lakers are now 2-0 against the Suns this season. They embarrassed the Suns at Phoenix in their home opener. At the end of that game, there was even some jawing between Mike D'Antoni and Phillip where D'Antoni said "we will see you again. we are good". Unfortunately, the Suns saw the Lakers again and they didn't see what wanted to see.

The Lakers are actually very good as well. Record wise, the Lakers were even better last year and then they faded away. This trend has been going on for a few years now. I hope it's similar this year, but this Lakers team is different. The reason they are different is their young guys Andrew Bynum and Jordan Farmar. These guys have taken a HUGE step forward this season and are taking the Lakers team with them. The scary part for the Suns is, this is a team on the up and up and they still have Kobe Bryant in his prime. The Suns on the other hand are supposed to win it all this season, but seem inadequate defensively as always and now they can't even handle the up and coming Lakers team. This is the scary part.

This game might have been a changing of the guard moment in some sense. Is it possible that the Suns window is closing shut and now even for the Pacific division crown, they have to fight with the Lakers? The Suns are not getting any younger and the D'Antoni's style can't withstand another non-finals season. There's huge pressure on him and this game exposed the same set of problems - defense, rebounding, lack of size etc. The Lakers look deeper, bigger, better defensively and more complete as a team. Sooner or later, you got to ask the question, "why can't the Suns be a complete team?" and back it up with the question "is this style impeding that?".

I love this style as much as the other guy and I want this style to succeed for the better of the league. NBA has become un-watchable before D'Antoni showed up. Even today, I couldn't watch the Heat-Cavs game despite wanting to watch the Wade-LeBron match-up. The style just sucks. So I want the Suns and D'Antoni to win desperately. Trust me, we will all be better for it. But is this a championship caliber style? Dan Bickley in the AZ republic referenced something I have been amazed by for a long time. Every day I look at the Suns box-score and am amazed that Leandro Barbosa routinely out-shoots Amare Stoudemire. Bickley has been raising a lot of "chemistry questions" and keeps saying that Amare is unhappy with the style. He recently said there's something wrong with it if LB shoots more for the season than Amare. Kind of my point. I don't know how Amare thinks or feels. May be Bickley knows more than me or may be he is just a pessimistic, negative kinda guy who is afraid something bad will happen with this team. But it is weird that this system doesn't really use Amare all that much. He gets killed for his defense, but to me, that only means you got to maximize his potential on offense even more.

I am still not giving up on this season or the style. But I have always been critical of D'Antoni on one thing - not using his bench enough. I think thats is still valid. He has to learn to use his bench -PERIOD. I don't know if he can go to a coaching school at ASU or something, he needs to learn to trust his bench. I have always felt like the Suns in the past have had good talent on the bench, but Mike doesn't use them. Now they may not have that good a bench, but he got to do something anyways. Secondly, he can't just play Diaw like he is some kind of a god. Diaw is not as good as D'Antoni wants him to be. Raja Bell is not what he used to be either. I am almost tempted to say put Raja on the bench and start Brian Skinner. But then again, with this offensive system, thats just not enough 3 point shooting.

Both Van Gundy and Mark Jackson made some interesting comments about these 2 teams towards the end of the game. Van Gundy says that the Lakers will beat the Suns if they play a 7 game series right now. Huge difference from the last 2 years when the Suns won in the playoffs. Mark Jackson also said how the Lakers are deeper and more talented top to bottom than the Suns. Amazing how far the dysfunctional Laker team have come in just 8 weeks since Kobe was rumored to be on the trading block.

As for the Suns, many questions and not too many answers right now. I would say D'Antoni should start with the 3 recommendations I made. 1) Use Amare more. 2) Use Diaw less 3) Use your bench. Infuse new talent.